National basketball team of the GDR

The national basketball team of the GDR represented the German Democratic Republic in basketball from 1952 to 1990 .

The greatest success of the men's team was reaching 6th place at the 1963 European basketball championship .

The women's selection can boast a bronze medal at the European Championships in 1966. In addition, she reached 4th place at the 1967 World Cup and the 1968 European Championship.

history

Men's team

After the Second World War, there was initially only one West German team. At the European Championship in 1953, an all-German team with four East German players took part and came in 14th . A team from the GDR also made it to the 1959 European Championship in Istanbul . The team was able to reach place 14.

The first German-German duel came in 1960 when qualifying for the Summer Olympics in the same year. Like the next games, the GDR won it. It was not until 1973 that the West selection succeeded in defeating East Germany.

In 1961, the GDR took 12th place at the European Championships in Belgrade , four places better than the team from West Germany.

The greatest success of the national basketball team was achieved at the 1963 European Championship in Wrocław . After four wins and three defeats in the preliminary round, the team placed third in Group B behind the Soviet Union and Poland. As only the first two places made it through, the GDR had to compete in the small semi-finals. There they clearly won 81:35 against Belgium and played in the game for 5th place against Bulgaria. There they lost 62:77, but they were one of the surprises of the tournament.

At the next European Championship in 1965, the GDR could not build on its success, but ended up with 10th place again four places ahead of West Germany. At the last European Championship participation in 1967, the GDR team reached 14th place. There was no participation in World Championships or Olympic Games because basketball had been downgraded to the less sponsored Sport II from 1969 onwards.

Ladies team

When it first took part in a European Championship in 1952, the GDR selection was defeated in all three games (including 4-133 against the USSR) and came in 12th and last.

At the next European Championship participation in 1958, she also reached 9th and penultimate place without a win. The subsequent European Championship participation in 1964 is more successful for the team and, just like the men's team in the previous year, it took 6th place.

The team celebrated their greatest success at the European Championships in Romania in 1966 . The GDR team can only be stopped in the semifinals by the eventual world champion from the Soviet Union . The GDR team won the game for third place with 65:60 against Romania and thus won the bronze medal.

The following year, the GDR team was one of the positive surprises at the 5th World Cup taking place in Prague . In the only World Cup participation of the GDR, the team took 4th place. In 1968 the team was able to almost repeat the success of 1966 at the European Championships in Messina and ended up on the unfortunate 4th place, as in the 1967 World Cup.

The last European championship with participation of the GDR women took place in Varna in 1972 . The team finished 7th. There was no participation in the Olympic Games.

The end

In 1969, at the suggestion of the DTSB, the SED decided that sport funding should focus on a certain number of sports, especially medal and point-intensive sports. Since basketball is an elaborate team sport for which, unlike individual sports, there is only one chance for a medal , it was downgraded. This was accompanied by a travel ban to non-socialist countries and sensitive restrictions on the promotion of talent, training and equipment.

See also

• GDR sport
• German national basketball team (men)
• German national basketball team of women
• German national basketball team (U16 juniors)
• German national basketball team (U18 juniors)

swell

1. ↑ Jutta Braun / René Wiese: Two-class society DDR-Sport ( Memento of the original from September 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.